Leaving Good Things Behind Photographs of Atlantic Canada

A stunning and surprising collection of photographs and stories from Atlantic Canada, from acclaimed documentary and editorial photojournalist, Darren Calabrese.

When a family tragedy pulled photojournalist Darren Calabrese back to Atlantic Canada, the region both he and his wife once called home, he was confronted with a sense of profound grief. But, on returning to the rural property where he grew up, as a new father, he rediscovered an appreciation for the geographies, histories, and people of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador, turning his lens to explore the tension between the perseverance of tradition and the inevitability of change.

Darren’s work led him into communities across the eastern provinces, who welcomed him to document the inextricable relationship between people, their stories, and the landscapes—equally beautiful and harsh—where they live and work. The result is an astonishing, evocative collection of curated photographs and archival images, with personal essays on family, coming home, loss, and his experiences exploring the region woven in throughout.

Elegant, spare, and revelatory at every turn, Leaving Good Things Behind shines a light on both the challenges and joys of the places we live.

DARREN CALABRESE is a documentary and editorial photojournalist based in Atlantic Canada whose work focuses squarely on people and the meaningful places they call home.

Born in New Brunswick, Canada and raised on a 400-acre woodlot, Darren grew up surrounded by stories of adventure and the challenges that generations of his family lived and worked through on the very same property. Hundreds of years of logging, hunting, and subsistence farming imbued a sense of respect and reverence for the rural existence.

Now, Darren and his wife, Tammy, split their time between the woodlot and Nova Scotia, where they live by the ocean in Halifax raising their daughters, Harriet and June.